Footage from Artcirq's performance of ASIU (Lost) at the 2014 edition of the Alianait Arts Festival in Iqaluit.

Asiu is Artcirq's latest show and is inspired by the traditional Inuit legend Amaqup Nunaat (The Land of Wolves) about two brothers who find themselves lost in the mysterious world of the Shadow People.

In 2009, Rachel Uyarasuk, elder of the Inuit community of Igloolik (Nunavut), evokes the ancestors whose name she received at birth. She explains how this transmission ensured their return among the world of the living.

Is it possible for First Nations to hold a festival worthy of the name in Québec’s metropolis?

The Montreal Frist Peoples Festival asks the question a press release distriburted this morning as the Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles (the PQDS), a paramunicipal body that administers a major program in support of events in Montreal’s downtown core cultural district, decided to cut off all grants to the Festival for the year 2014.

The PQDS claims that the First Peoples Festival lacks sufficiently innovative programming. This is a surprising attack on the Montreal event that has very successfully and continually transformed itself over the years. Since it moved its activities to the Quartier des spectacles, it has offered a brand-new formula that richly highlights First Peoples culture, art and diversity.

First Peoples Festival is a First Nations’ multi-disciplinary festival, an event unique in its genre and presented yearly by the Terres en vues/Land Insights society for the last 24 years.

Last year, the festival succeeded in balancing its budget without a deficit although the very day its program was launched, June 18 2013, the PQDS announced a drastic $50 000 cut to the Festival’s budget. This year the festival was been hit with a great blow that could prove to be fatal.

The festival states that this new obstacle is a test of the commitment of city of Montreal and government stakeholders to make a place for First Nations culture in Quebec’s metropolis and to associate these with the many commemorations set for city’s 375th anniversary in 2017.

Festival organizers are demanding that those granting funds to the PQDS, the City of Montreal first and then the government of Québec, must take action without delay to reinstate a funding for First Peoples Festival within a structure that can allow it to develop and thrive.

Moreover, the festival is questioning the very way funding is delivered by the PQSD. Organizers believe that it is high time, as ethical choices, corruption and fair practices are in the spotlight in Montréal during the ongoing Charbonneau Commission, to review the governance of this paramunicipal body that oversees such important budgets.

Both the live audio from the hearings and Kunuk’s evening show will also be broadcast by IsumaTV through local community radio channels and IsumaTV television network in Arviat, Cambridge Bay, Igloolik and Taloyoak.

Documentary film about how people, wildlife and the environment are impacted by industrial developments in Alberta and Saskatchewan. More importantly, this film is about communicating the voices and concerns of Indigenous people, who are often left out of decision-making processes, yet are among those most impacted.

In the documentary film Inuit Cree Reconciliation (Inuit Adlait Isumagijuniqatiginiiq), Zacharias Kunuk and Neil Diamond team up to research the events and historical impacts of a 1770's war between Inuit and Cree in Northern Québec.

Following the Peace Celebration Event held at Nastapoka River in northern Québec by a small group of Inuit and Cree in the summer of 2011, Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit) and Neil Diamond (Cree) - two of Canada's most respected filmmakers - interview Inuit and Cree Elders in the side-by-side communities of Kuujjuarapik and Whapmagootsui researching an old 1770's war between the two nations and its impact on people today.

Research for the project began in 2010. Check out some of the initial interviews here.

As a parallel project to the film, the ARTCO project introduced Inuit and Cree children in the community to new media tools which were used in a multidisciplinary artistic process to explore past and present realities, to connect with others, practice collective action and create a better future.

Zacharias Kunuk talks about Inuit concerns with the proposed $6 billion Baffinland Iron Mine in Nunavut. Kunuk is an award-winning filmmaker, Igloolik Hamlet Councilor, Officer of the Order of Canada and recently-elected Board member to Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA).

IsumaTV announces our next interactive screening of our newest film Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change , taking place in New York City and online at www.isuma.tv/ikcc. We invite you to think of questions you would like to ask filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro at the event. You can send us these questions via Twitter using the hashtag #ikcc_nafvf . A hashtag is just a way of organizing tweets so that both Isuma and the Native American Film + Video Festival can work together. All you have to do is type your question in twitter and at the end of the tweet type: "#ikcc_nafvf". We look forward to hearing from you!

On Baffin Island, two mountains of ore will be cut down at Mary River. Some residents of Igloolik react to this development : they worry that this industrial development will destroy their environment and the marine mammals as well as their culture and hunting life style.